The Arbitrarian is the work of David Sparks, a graduate student in Political Science at Duke University. I’m interested in politics, statistics, information design, sports, and everything else. Feel free to visit my personal homepage at Duke, or see a list of other work I’ve produced.
3 responses so far ↓
Ty // April 27, 2008 at 10:17 am
Although I don’t really understand half of what I have seen from you , it is quickly evident that you are a bright guy. I coach a girls varsity basketball team and I was purusing the web to try and find a decent stat comparison spreadsheet to fairly evaluate and grade my players overall contribution to the team. I stumbled upon your site. Good stuff.
Neal // May 13, 2008 at 9:19 am
David, I’m very interested in the People’s Statistic Project. I fool around with stats myself, but not the extent that you and other APBR folks do so. However, when I first looked at the PS results, it occurred to me that it looked more like a high-concept popularity contest than an actual “contributes to wins” stat. From a marketing point of view, I think that might actually have some value. You mentioned in a forum that many of the surveyed seem to be trying to tweak the results to make MJ the #1 all-time. I think if you included dunks in the survey that might put him over the top, and yield a weighting system that could predict a players “star-power” in the modern age. Chris Paul is becoming very popular, but can you imagine if he dunked on guys?
Chip Crain // May 14, 2008 at 9:23 am
Just thought you would like to know I have posted your interview. It can be found at http://3shadesofblue.blogspot.com/2008/05/arbitrary-interview-with-arbitrarian.html
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